The silver An exchange traded fund is a mutual fund scheme with units listed on a stock exchange, built to follow an index or an asset such as gold. Read the full meaning of ETF India price fall can be seen clearly in the numbers. Individuals who bought silver ETFs near the January levels are now looking at a very different value in their statements.
On the domestic side, silver on the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) was quoted at about Rs 1,95,800 per kg on 23 October, whereas the peak in January was about Rs 4.2 lakh per kg.
Gold has also come down from its January record, by about 28%. Silver has therefore fallen roughly twice as hard as gold in the same period.
A fall of this size would normally be followed by investors withdrawing from funds that hold the metal. In India, however, the money has not left. Families and individual investors are still putting fresh amounts into silver ETFs, even while the price remains nearly half of what it was at the start of the year.
Silver ETFs: record January, steady September
The amount was more than double that of December 2025, and it came in the same month in which silver touched its record.
Gold and silver ETFs together drew Rs 33,503 crore in January, which was more than the inflows into equity mutual funds for that month, as reported from the AMFI figures. Commodity funds were therefore ahead of equity schemes in the monthly collection table.
The interest in these funds had been growing even earlier. In the first 11 months of 2025, silver ETF folios had risen fourfold, while gold ETF folios had risen 53%, as per Business Standard.
September 2026 was a much quieter month than January, and yet the flows continued.
Investor folios increased from 52.7 lakh in August to 53.1 lakh in September. Fresh families are still opening positions in these funds, even though the metal is trading at nearly half of its record price.
The rally had also created a separate problem in the physical market. Some silver ETFs were trading 10 to 12% above the value of the metal they held.
For an investor buying such units on the exchange, the price paid was higher than the value of the silver behind the unit and the gap depended on how many buyers were available at that time.
What sets the rupee price of silver
The price of silver in India follows the international benchmark, which is converted into rupees at the USD-INR exchange rate. The effective import duty on silver was raised to about 15% from about 6% on 13 May 2026.
A change in rupee therefore reaches the domestic price in the same way as a change in the dollar price of the metal.
Investment flows, which have been discussed above, sit alongside the others and do not replace them.
On industrial demand, the AMFI monthly report for January 2026 described the silver ETF inflows as "driven by robust demand from industries such as electric vehicles, semiconductors, telecom and artificial intelligence". For gold, the same report said, "The surge in gold ETFs can be attributed to the rally in gold prices fuelled by geopolitical uncertainties and strong demand for safer assets." The reasons given for the two metals were therefore different.
MCX silver futures is a 30 kg contract.
Sources also quote the late October MCX price slightly differently.
